Kaikoura’s Art Deco Surprise

Kerb crawling the Kaikoura seafront, it comes as a visual shock to see this superb little cinema. The Mayfair Theatre was built in 1935, and is now run by the local community. Art Deco it certainly is right down to its signwriting which is a letter form derived from ‘fat faces’ such as Braggadocio designed in 1930. One wonders whether the inspiration for the Mayfair came from the Art Deco reconstruction of Napier, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island after its devastating earthquake.

They still use the original projectors at the Mayfair lighted by those carbon arcs that require constant vigilance for fear of their gaps widening and the picture fading. (I remember as a boy how the audience used to catcall if the picture started to disappear because the projectionist might have popped out for a quick smoke!)
How astute of the local community not only to recognize the historical value of Art Deco but to maintain the theatre in such good nick.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Fyffe House, Kaikoura Peninsula

Since before recorded history there were whales off Kaikoura. They mewed unmolested because Maori, who flocked to this coast for its fish and crayfish, had developed no technology that might harm them. But the whalers came in the early eighteen hundreds with their harpoons and flensing knives; the seas and beaches hereabouts must often have been a loathsome sight.

Kaikoura’s first whaling station, the Wai O Puka Fishery, was established in 1842 by Robert Fyffe and John Murray in ‘Fyffe’s Cove’ (now called Armers Beach). Twelve years later Fyffe was joined by his cousin, George, who unexpectedly found himself in charge of farming and whaling operations when Robert drowned just a few weeks later.

The Fyffes’ house was built in three distinct stages. The first, a simple cottage, possibly built in the mid 1840s, was earlier known as Cooper’s House. Its construction materials were standard for the times: cob, lath and plaster, pit sawn native timbers and eucalypts. But it also had whale vertebrae for foundations!

By 1857, George had added a kitchen with a store room above; then, with his wife, Catherine, he continued the extension, at right angles to the old cottage, until they had, by 1861, completed the west wing of Fyffe House. Only two other families, the Goodalls and Lows, have owned Fyffe House since it was built. George Low bequeathed it to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1981.

In the intervening years Kaikoura has grown into a flourishing tourist town and it’s difficult to picture life when it was a remote whaling station on a harsh and craggy peninsula below mountains whose snow lasts all summer.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

The Deserted Cottage

All over rural New Zealand deserted cottages like this one moulder in paddocks, quietly disintegrating, their elements slowly merging into the ground upon which they stand. This one, north of Kaikoura on the north-east coast of the South Island was probably occupied as recently as ten or twenty years ago. Apart from the section of wall to the left its boards are still in reasonable condition, its window frames and glass are largely intact, its roof iron is quite good (despite a small garden growing in its front gutter). It's probably worse for wear on the hidden side because the bit we can see, facing east and north, gets sun whereas the back of the house might be damp and lichen encrusted.

With a lot of money and good intentions it might be restored - just.

One wonders about its history; how many generations grew up here? When were children's voices last heard in its rooms and the garden? What happened to the occupants: did they prosper and build a new house nearby, or did the cottage die with its dying dynasty?

Pictorially it's a gem of dilapidation but there's probably a sad story lurking in the background.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.